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Author: Anne Lee

Now that I’ve been a fan of situation CDs/otome drama CDs for a few years, I can safely say there is a CD on practically any theme you can think of! And when I saw the amazing Halloween-themed cover forAmasu Toki no Kataribe ~ Halloween no Hi o Kimi Totomo ni(Spare-time Storyteller ~ Halloween Day with You), I knew I had to get my hands on it. Luckily, on a recent trip to Japan, I was able to find the special edition that comes with a picture book for a very good price at a Mandarake in Tokyo!

It’s time for another episode of Pixel x Pixel! This is our last episode before Halloween, so we talk about some Halloween-y topics such as the horror visual novel Neighbor (check out Marcus’ review here) and some Halloween video game events. Marcus got into Google’s Project Stream test, so we’re basically on the cutting of video game news! We also talk at length about streaming from the PS2… Wait, that isn’t the cutting edge of gaming in 2018?

Last month was the Stealth Game Community Game-Along, and that means it’s time for a roundup! After ever Community Game-Along, I round up the submissions from as many participants as possible so everyone can see what people played and maybe get some ideas for games to play in the future! You can also check out #StealthSeptember on Twitter to see everyone’s thoughts and submissions.

Episode 2 of the Pixel x Pixel podcast is ready for your listening pleasure! In this episode, Marcus and I talk about the Frogger clone Marcus made for a class, sweetpool, AtelierOnline, SisterlyBliss, Google’s Project Stream, HypnosisMic, and lots more!

Happy Spooktober, everyone! It’s time for the return of one of my favorite Community Game-Along themes: horror games! Playing a horror game or spooky-themed title is a great way to get ready for one of the best holidays of the year: Halloween! I may not go trick or treating anymore, but I can still get in the spirit of the season with a creepy game!

I’m thrilled to announce my brand new gaming podcast with Marcus of Pixel Pacas, Pixel x Pixel! Join us for fun and thoughtful discussions of visual novels, niche and retro games, and other media we love!

One of the most common requests I receive is to revive Chic Pixel Plus or return to podcasting in some form, so this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. While I absolutely loved what Sarah and I made Chic Pixel Plus into, I felt it was time to move on from the really structured format and focus more on video games, since that’s the topic I tend to cover the most. When my long-time friend, Patreon supporter, and Chic Pixel Discord mod Marcus offered to step in and help me start up a new podcast, I couldn’t wait to get started!

Marcus loves all kinds of narrative-driven games such as visual novels and point-and-click adventure games, as well as horror and other niche areas that really compliment my own interests well. He also is a prolific writer, just like me, so expect lots of talk about our writing process and what we’re working on. I think we’ll have a lot of interesting things to talk about on the podcast! Like Chic Pixel and Pixel Pacas, we will occasionally talk about media that contains graphic themes, but we will always provide warnings beforehand and will not describe anything potentially disturbing or sexually explicit in detail.

The podcast format will be pretty straightforward: We’ll start each episode by talking about what media we’ve been consuming and what we’ve been up to lately and end with a discussion of interesting/relevant news and new releases. While the podcast will definitely focus on games, don’t worry! I’ll still be talking about what anime I watch, and we may also chat about other podcasts, movies, and whatever else we’re currently interested in. We will upload a new episode once every 2 weeks. And you can support my Patreon for as low as $1/month to get each episode 3 whole days before it goes live on the main feed!

This year, I followed up the always-busy JRPGJuly with an Action RPG Community Game-Along for August, and I’m glad to see so many people participated! Some folks even doubled up and picked a game for JPRGJuly that worked for ARPGAugust, which is a great idea! Read on to see what everyone played in August, and look forward to the October Community Game-Along post in just a few days! (If you want to start preparing now, the theme is horror games!)

Over at Tales of the Backlog, Capsulejay reviewed Ys Origin and Beyond Oasis, and Jakejames Lugo also reviewed Beyond Oasisover on his Youtube channel. At JRPG.moe, Griffin reviewed the Japan-exclusive Dreamcast game with a fun title, Napple Tale: Arsia in Dreamland. I’d never heard of this game before Griffin started playing it before ARPGAugust, but it looks super adorable and apparently the creative team was comprised of mostly women!

Okay, looks like #ARPGAugust gives me good reason to get to SMT Devil Summoner 2. It’s one of the few of my unplayed games I’d bought new..like ten years ago. No clue why I forgot, the first one is great fun.